May 2027
May at a glance: 0 exhibitions opening, 6 closing, and 19 more on view across the city.

Getty VillaFree
Sculpture, jewellery, vessels, gems and coins show how female rulers of the first millennium BCE were portrayed, and how those images have been reinterpreted since.

Craft Contemporary
Nine artists from the California Community Foundation Fellowship use fire as a lens on cultural perseverance, identity and ancestral memory.

Craft Contemporary
Indigenous artist collective's residency 'Fuego Medicinal' on fire, natural dyes, textiles and California native-plant craft traditions.

Craft Contemporary
Colombian artist's first LA solo show, juxtaposing colonial bronze casting with Indigenous weaving to examine the conquest of the Americas.

Fowler Museum at UCLAFree
Contemporary Whakatōhea weavers respond to an ancestral kaitaka (cloak) from the Fowler's collection, bringing ancient and modern Māori art into dialogue.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
A two-story immersive installation exploring six aesthetic themes of cinematic light and color -- sunrise/sunset, moon, neon, candlelight, fireworks, and campfire -- via synchronized projections and an original score.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
A new Schmidt Prize commission by Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña: a collaborative 'quipu of encounters' on the water crisis, linking communities in Chile and LA.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
Immersive environments by Julian Charrière on water systems and planetary fragility, including a new commission for the inaugural Schmidt Environment and Art Prize.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Photographer, filmmaker and Pikes Peak racer Jeff Zwart's four-decade life with Porsche, told through his images, films and historic cars in The Vault.

Fowler Museum at UCLAFree
Three South Asian artists (Suchitra Mattai, Jagdeep Raina, Swapnaa Tamhane) use textiles as counter-monuments memorializing overlooked communities.

Autry Museum of the American West
Works from the Autry's Native American collections explore Knowing, Creating and Transference, curated in part by three contemporary Plains Indian artists reflecting on their traditions.

Petersen Automotive Museum
LA artist Joshua Vides hand-paints black outlines onto real cars in a mechanic's garage scene, flattening them into what looks like a 2D sketch.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Immersive exhibition on horror cinemas cultural impact, with props and costumes from Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and more, across six themed chambers.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Family-friendly look at how filmmakers create movie zombies, set in a playful pretend cemetery with an interactive animatronic puppet by Spectral Motion.

Petersen Automotive Museum
A chronological timeline of record-setting automobiles from the postwar era to today, tracing how aerodynamics and powertrain design chased raw speed.
Norton Simon Museum
Traces the rivalry between San Francisco's purist and Los Angeles's experimental schools of postwar California photography.

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
Japanese American artists, photographers and designers whose lives were upended by wartime incarceration, and the postwar work that followed.

Wende MuseumFree
Co-curated with a NASA historian, this show pairs Cold War-era and contemporary artworks with artifacts like a full-scale Sputnik-1 model on the Space Race and cosmos in art.

Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
Over 100 objects from the Oscar-winning director's films, including storyboards, concept art, creature models, props and on-set photographs.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Betye Saar's Huntington-commissioned site-specific installation: a 17-foot vintage wooden canoe with found objects including birdcages and antlers.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Explores the design dialogue between American automakers and Italian coachbuilders, pairing American mechanical strength with European styling.

Petersen Automotive Museum
Traces Waymo's evolution from Google's self-driving car project to a leading autonomous vehicle company, showing the tech turning sci-fi into reality.

California Science CenterFree
17,000-sq-ft exhibition with 25+ interactive activities exploring the science of sports and movement, featuring LA-based mentor athletes; on view through the 2028 Olympics.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Tongva artist Mercedes Dorame's commissioned installation on Southern California's freshwater springs: photographs, painting, sculpture, ceramics and a Tongva-poetry soundscape.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Outdoor sculpture in the Stroll Garden of charred Sierra Nevada timber and glazed ceramic teardrops, on forest destruction and regrowth.
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.